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SILEX is a Spatial Data Infrastructure developed for the management and distribution of the primary archaeological information about the Neolithic flint mine of Casa Montero, located in the periphery of the city of Madrid (Spain). It is designed according an open approach, based on the use of standards and open source software and on the free access to the whole data about the site via Internet. It is a distributed information system with a three layer architecture: the data layer, formed by GIS info and a complex entity-relationship thematic database; the web service layer, with the use of standard protocols and languages for accessing the database; and the interface layer, a mashup that combines forms and a geographic viewer for querying and retrieving data.

This research has been centred on the analytical identification of the use of cinnabar (the red mercury sulphide-HgS-) as a pigment in Neolithic and Chalcolithic archaeological contexts (VI to III millennia B.C.) and in the determination of its possible origin by the application of Lead Isotopes analysis. In order to confront the isotopic results of the archaeological cinnabar pigments, samples from the mercury sulphide mineral deposits of Usagre (Badajoz) and Las Alpujarras (Granada) were submitted to Lead Isotopes analysis. These results were added to those available in the geo-chronological literature referred to the Almadén mining district (Ciudad Real), the largest concentration of cinnabar in the world, although with the oldest evidence of mining dated, at present, to the 8th century BC. The confrontation of the lead isotopic results of the samples from archaeological contexts and of the mineral deposits showed, firstly, the distinguishable lead isotopic composition of the main cinnabar mines studied and, secondly, the consistency of the isotopic composition of the archaeological Neolithic and Chalcolithic cinnabar samples with the Almadén district isotopic field. Based on the currently available isotopic data, it is proposed that the exploitation and the use as a pigment of cinnabar mineral from the Almadén district started, at least, in the late 6th millennium BC, being distributed through long distance exchange networks during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods

The archaeometric characterization of a set of potsherds from six Neolithic sites from the Madrid region has allowed the identification of a new and time-persisting regional technological tradition, based on the deliberated addition of crushed bone as temper in most pottery containers. This is the first known case in Iberia, and is outstanding because of its early chronologies and persistence in time: from 5300 to perhaps 3400 cal BC. Samples were characterized by complementary mineralogical and geochemical techniques such as thin-section, conventional and grazing angle X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF). The addition of bone temper created a light and resistant ceramic material, with technological advantages for both the storage and transportation. Such advantages might be linked to mobile or semi-sedentary groups., La caracterización arqueométrica de un conjunto de materiales cerámicos procedentes de 6 yacimientos neolíticos de Madrid ha permitido identificar una nueva tradición tecnológica regional persistente en el tiempo, basada en la adición intencionada de hueso machacado como desgrasante en la mayoría de los recipientes cerámicos. Se trata del primer caso de la Península Ibérica en el que se documenta este tipo de desgrasante en cerámicas de estas cronologías con una continuidad temporal de entre el 5300/5200 hasta posiblemente el 3400 cal AC. Los materiales seleccionados se caracterizaron por técnicas mineralógicas y geoquímicas complementarias como lámina delgada, difracción de rayos X (DRX) convencional y de ángulo rasante, microscopía electrónica de barrido (MEB) y espectrometría de fluorescencia de rayos X (FRX). La adición de hueso produce un material cerámico ligero pero a su vez resistente, con ventajas tecnológicas para recipientes de almacenamiento y/o transporte. Dichas ventajas quizá podrían vincularse a grupos con hábitos móviles o semisedentarios.

History is critical for the comparison of Iberia and the Southwest on at least two distinct levels: the history of research in the present, and the history of events in the distant past. Archaeologists study the latter: we want to understand and interpret events in the distant past, for example, Chaco Canyon at ad 1000 or Los Millares at 3000 bc. But archaeological understandings and interpretations of these events refl ect the history of our disciplines. Th e axes of comparison we discuss in our chapters refl ect these two levels of history.

[ES] El objeto de este trabajo es presentar la caracterización de las rocas silíceas de la mina neolítica de Casa Montero (5400-5200 cal. BC). Se localiza en Madrid (España) y ocupa una superficie de 4 hectareas, con 3897 pozos cartografiados, de los cuales 324 han sido excavados durante tres campañas de excavaciones. Este tipo de estudios es esencial para establecer las características diagnósticas de la materia prima e investigar la distribución de los productos de las minas. Se ha realizado también un análisis de las relaciones entre las diferentes materias primas silíceas y la cadena lítica operativa. La caracterización se realizó usando dos métodos: descripción macroscópica y análisis petrológico. Han sido establecidos siete tipos macroscópicos (de 1 a 7) y cuatro grupos petrológicos (de A a D). La clasificación macroscópica fué fundamental en el análisis de los restos líticos, dado el gran volumen de material lítico recuperado en el sitio. La clasificación petrológica constituye un buen método para identificar los materiales de la Mina de Casa Montero en otros sitios arqueológicos., [EN] The aim of this paper is to present the characterisation of the siliceous rocks from the Neolithic mine of Casa Montero (5400-5200 cal. BC). It is located in Madrid (Spain) and it occupies 4 hectares with 3897 mapped shafts, out of which 324 have been excavated throughout three field seasons. This kind of study is essential in order to establish the diagnostic features of the raw material and to investigate the distribution of the mine’s products. An analysis of the relationship between different siliceous raw materials and the lithic operative chain has been carried out as well. The characterisation has been performed using two methods: macroscopic description and petrological analysis. Seven macroscopic types (from 1 to 7) and four petrological groups (from A to D) have been established. The macroscopic classification has been found to be fundamental in the analysis of the lithic remains, given the large volume of lithic material recovered in the site. The petrological classification provides a good method for identifying materials from the Casa Montero mine at other archaeological sites. The observation of refits has suggested a preference for a certain raw material. In order to verify this, an statistical Factorial Analysis has been applied to study the representation of each phase of the lithic operative chain in each macroscopic type of raw material.

In this chapter, I will argue that the period known as the Copper Age saw the rise of lineage societies, made possible and sustained through the cyclical involvement of different communities in collective labor processes and other public events. Collective infrastructural investments were non-agricultural facilities: enclosures, fortifi cations, and monumental burials. Th ese kinship-based societies had limited technological development, and groups were by no means economically “caged,” to use Mann’s terms (Mann 1986). Consequently, inclusive — and frequently ritualized — strategies would have been more effi cient than coercion as means of legitimizing political authority in and between aggregated corporate groups.

The site of La Albareja (Fuenlabrada, Madrid) was discovered as a result of the archaeological assessment of Madrid’s southern subway (VIA sector of Metrosur). Preliminary surface and subsurface analyses and open-area excavations determined the presence of three small pits and a stratified area of 344’45 square meters. The excavations in this area recovered a sequence of at least four structures with related postholes that we consider small huts functionally attached to a big underground oval structure. The site is located on a smooth slope of a secondary valley. This fact, together with the existence of occasional postholes, the presence of a layer of wood imprints in mud, the existence of hearths, and the shape and section of the main structure itself suggests its interpretation as an underground hut. None of these wattle and daub buildings would be visible until actually inside the small secondary valley bottom where it is set. All the material evidence points to an early Iron Age (circa VII century BC –in non calibrated dates) dispersed rural settlement. The site may be contemporary to the hilltop site of Cerro de San Antonio and the close-by site of Sector III de Getafe, actually located in a very similar topographic setting. La Albareja may be interpreted as a small household, part of a more general dispersed rural settlement pattern. Although dependence from a nuclear ‘central’ settlement could be a plausible hypothesis, we up-to-date lack one such site in the surroundings. The open-area excavation of La Albareja shows how the previously thought to be domestic huts may in fact be small timber building functionally subsidiary to bigger close-by domestic spaces. The structure of this settlement may in fact be a good evidence of the socioeconomic changes initiated some time around the end of the Bronze Age.

The more we charge specifi c historical events with explanatory causality, the more possible alternative pasts we will be able to construct. In this paper I argue that this fact critically affects the interpretations of those of us who rely on an extremely limited and incomplete data set, and no available textual source. This adds up to the fact that prehistorians seldom have the evidence to claim that a particular set of occurrences may in fact be a transformative event in a Sewellian sense, partially—but not only—because of the diffi culties in establishing any detailed succession of happenings, and thus have problems arguing that a specifi c event had a structural effect. Nevertheless, and as Sewell also suggests, we may shift in spatial and temporal scales and confront “eventful” analyses of macrohistorical processes. In order to discuss these issues I have used a characteristically underdetermined hypothesis: the arrival of seafaring Neolithic colonists— Argonauts —on the Iberian coast, a local event that has been said to have a structural effect at a regional scale.

Materialist perspectives have focused their arguments on the leading role of coercion and conflict in order to explain the Third millennium BC Iberian archaeological record. Recently, ritual dynamics have been considered. All arguments rely on the same evidence, having explicit or implicit generalizing interpretative intentions. This paper is a critical review of two recurring opinions used by Spanish scholars to support the hierarchical -read class- and coercive nature of Copper Age societies: that variability in settlement size reflects control hierarchies and that highly formalized planning of villages and monumental enclosures reflect direct coercive control of labor. Finally, I briefly comment on some recent problematic uses of the ritual/domestic dichotomy.

SILEX (Sistema de Información Locacional en XML, in English Locational Information System in XML) is an information system, under the form of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), designed for the systematic management and distribution of data recovered through the excavation of a particular archaeological site.

La Arqueología es una disciplina comparativa. Tanto los enfoques histórico-culturales, procesuales como postprocesuales han recurrido a distintas formas de comparación. En el caso de los llamados recintos de fosos del IV y III milenios AC, la comparación se ha utilizado para sugerir su origen Neolítico, sus similitudes con casos europeos o sus diferencias o similitudes con los recintos murados, entre otras. Detrás de estas comparaciones hay frecuentemente una práctica normativa, en cuanto se obvia la comparación de trayectorias histórico-arqueológicas. En este breve texto sugiero dos tipos de comparaciones arqueológicas, ambas a escala o implicaciones regionales. La primera es diacrónica y compara los dos recintos ibéricos más antiguos entre sí y con algunos de los casos conocidos posteriores. La segunda es sincrónica y compara recintos madrileños posiblemente coetáneos. Concluyo sugiriendo que la comparación es saludable como procedimiento para hacer aflorar determinados aspectos del registro arqueológico ya conocido que frecuentemente quedan ocultos u obviados.

Se presentan las características de los pozos mineros de la explotación de sílex del Neolítico Antiguo de Casa Montero, una descripción preliminar de las evidencias de herramientas mineras y de las cadenas operativas analizadas en el año 2005.

Este trabajo presenta resultados preliminares de la excavación de la mina del Neolítico Antiguo de Casa Montero (Madrid). Se tratan aspectos descriptivos de las estructuras mineras, el encuadre geológico y los primeros resultados sobre la clasificación petrológica de las muestras de sílex.

Se presenta el potencial de la aplicación de las Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales en la gestión, investigación y difusión del Patrimonio Arqueológico a través del ejemplo del sistema de información del yacimiento arqueológico de Casa Montero (Madrid). Se muestran los servicios y recursos que permiten el almacenamiento, gestión y difusión de la información de un yacimiento arqueológico concreto.

El reciente descubrimiento y excavación de la mina de sílex de Casa Montero (Madrid) ha confirmado la importancia que este recurso mineral ha tenido desde el Pleistoceno hasta nuestros días en la región.

The present paper is an overview of the available evidence for socioeconomic and political inequalities in Central Iberia, from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. It focuses on mortuary practices, labour investments, craft production and settlement organization, disentangling the keys of prehistoric political economy. Following the evidence, I argue that the existence of permanent social inequalities would have been limited by three factors: a limited amount of surplus, the failure of small scale groups to increase the amount of labour force, and most important of all, the absolute absence of means of accumulation of value.

This paper attempts a general assessment of the contributions included in this volume. We examine three main kinds of problems related to the research on social inequality in Iberian Late Prehistory. These are theoretical, empirical and interpretative. Among the first, we comment upon the very definition of social inequality, the taxonomical categories employed in social evolution, as well as the main factors causing inequality, with special attention to labour force mobilisation. Among the second, we highlight some weaknesses of the Iberian archaeological record for the investigation of the subject matter, such as the limitations of the absolute chronology or the settlement record. Finally, we discuss the propositions that have been put forward to understand the forms that social inequality took among Neolithic, Copper and Bronze Age communities, concluding that Iberian archaeologists would much benefit from a comparative perspective.

This contribution addresses the metallurgy of Kargaly (the most important Bronze Age mining district in the Eurasian steppes) and its envir onmental impact. Our analyses of ancient copper slag demonstrated that metallurgical techniques were primitive. Smelting experiments evaluated charcoal consumption and the efficiency of copper recovery (the main factors governing models of copper production’s environmental impact). Our palaeoenvironmental research sampled and radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites and natural deposits and contextualized that evidence by studying the present-day landscape. We combined study of the pollen rain with mathematical modelling of the landscape using satellite imagery, geographical information systems, and global positioning technology.

This article examines contextual data from three Copper Age ditched enclosures excavated between 1997 and 2001 in the middle Tagus basin. Calibrated radiocarbon dates suggest that they were all constructed and backfilled during the first half of the third millennium BC. Key characteristics are their heterogeneous topographic position, variable visibility, small size and high density of features and domestic refuse. All evidence supports their interpretation as small occupation sites. Finally, we discuss the role of ditched enclosures in their contemporary regional and Iberian context. We suggest that their variability is a result of diverse aggregation and fission dynamics characterisitic of segmentary societies.

Este trabajo analiza la posición del recientemente creado colectivo de arqueólogos comerciales dentro de la estructura general de clases sociales contemporánea. Se examina cómo su origen unitario, en cuanto a su pertenencia a la pequeña burguesía de autoempleados, ha evolucionado en una época de bonanza del mercado de suelo hacia una multiplicación formal de sus posiciones de clase, con una aparente tendencia a la polarización en pequeños empleadores y semiproletarios. Observamos que la dinámica del mercado arqueológico se basa en ciclos cortos de expansión y recesión, que en último caso no provocan la polarización propuesta por una perspectiva clásica del marxismo, sino una reducción al autoempleo sostenido y una expulsión del mercado de gran parte de la fuerza de trabajo. La futura evolución como sector de servicios y su propia reproducción depende de factores coyunturales externos a su problemática, convirtiéndolo en un sector altamente inestable: la dependencia de una política económica socialdemócrata que excluye del mercado el potencial valor añadido de un patrimonio arqueológico que no se encuentra plenamente mercantilizado, y la de un mercado de suelo fluctuante supeditado a las crisis cíclicas del capitalismo avanzado. Se presenta el caso de la Comunidad de Madrid, paradigmático por su carácter pionero tanto en la investigación peninsular como en la introducción del llamado libre mercado arqueológico, y representante de un caso extremo de arqueología en contextos postindustriales.

El seguimiento arqueológico del Metro Madrid-Arganda del Rey ha permitido localizar y documentar un nuevo yacimiento Deseado' (Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Madrid). Su excavación, cuya extensión superó los 10.000 m: ha proporcionado evidencias de ocupación desde el Neolítico hasta la Antigüedad tardío. Presentamos el primer registro estratigráfico regional de uno cabaña neolítica y sus estructuras asociadas, proponiendo que estos hallazgos deben entenderse como rural de un proceso de 'acumulación primitiva' de capital agrario, sin el cual no resulta históricamente comprensible el desarrollado en las sociedades campesinas del III milenio hc en la Meseta Peninsular.

[ES] Presentamos los resultados de un proyecto interdisciplinar diseñado para las condiciones efímeras de una intervención de urgencia. La excavación de una formación arqueológica característica de la Prehistoria reciente de la Meseta peninsular, el yacimiento de 'fondos de cabaña', ha permitido, mediante la aplicación de una rigurosa metodología estratigráfica, una recuperación sistemática de los restos y el cruce de distintas evidencias cuantificadas (cerámica, industria lítica, semillas, huesos), proponer la existencia de una estructuración funcional y social del yacimiento, identificando lo que entendemos como un área dedicada a la producción y reproducción del ciclo agrario. Todo ello posibilita la discusión de los factores sociales y económicos que determinan la formación de los depósitos arqueológicos y su distribución temporal y espacial, consecuencia de una sociedad cuyas relaciones de producción consideramos definidas por la apropiación de la tierra, [EN] The present paper deals with results obtained by an interdisciplinary project, conceived for the rescue excavation of a site N1 which pits are the unique features. Such sites comprise one of the ubiquitous archaeological formations of the later prehistory of the central Spanish Meseta. A stratigraphical recording system, systematic recovery Of finds and the intersection of quantified evidence lead to the interpretation of a functional and social structure of the site, identifying what we understand as an agrarian production and reproduction area. Discussion is centred on social and economic factors involved in the formation of archaeological deposits and their spatial and temporal distribution, which are the result of a society in which the relafions of production are dejined by the appmpiation of land.

[ES] Este trabajo propone un marco teórico alternativo para el análisis de la Prehistoria reciente de la Meseta peninsular, incidiendo en el carácter pluriactivo de la racionalidad económica campesina. Desde esta perspectiva, se discuten diversas hipótesis en las que prevalece el elemento pastoril como factor determinante en la economía prehistórica. Como conclusión, se presenta la evolución social de la Meseta como una anomalía histórica, en la que un tipo específico de gestión económica mitigó el desarrollo de desigualdades sociales permanente, [EN] The present paper discusses the Meseta's Late Prehistory from un alternative theoretical framework, focussing on fhe multiactive character of peasant economic rationality. From this point of view, recurrent interpretation of the dominance of pastoralist in prehistoric economies are discussed In conclusion, the social evolution of this area is seen as an historical anomaly, in which a specific form of ecosystem management restrains the development of permanent social inequalities.

mana de El Val se encuentra en el término municipal de Alcalá de Henares, en el espacio que enmarcan la carretera nacional 11 Madrid- Barcelona por el Norte y el río Henares por el Sur. El yacimiento está a la altura del kilómetro 32,200 de la primera, de la que dista unos 200 m. mientras que son 400 m. los que la separan del río. Se asienta sobre un terreno sedimentario en la última terraza del río, una zona fácilmente inundable y muy apta ara la agricultura por su fertilidad, horizontalidad y buenas posibilidades de incorporar regadíos.